I mentioned, in earlier posts, that I was doing Slimming World.  See my post here and here for a re-cap.  I managed to lose 1 stone, yep that’s right, 1 whole stone! Go me!

I was delighted with myself and I have managed to keep it off. So in order to give myself a treat, I made this rather fabulous coffee cake.  I love making this cake and it always seems to go down well with any visitors who call, and as it’s Mother’s Day Sunday, I thought this would go down a treat with my Mother & me of course.

Here’s the recipe. It’s pretty easy enough to make & just delicious with coffee or maybe a cappuccino!

You will need the following:

• 8 inch square cake tin with 2 inch sides
• Food Processor or a hand held mixer will suffice

Ingredients:
200g / 7oz of butter, softened
200g / 7oz of castor sugar
3 eggs
325g / 11 1/2oz plain flour, sifted
3tsp baking powder
150ml / 5fl oz milk
2tbsp coffee essence – Camp or Irel

Buttercream Icing
200g / 7oz butter, softened
150g / 5oz icing sugar, sifted
2tsp vanilla extract
3tbsp milk

• Method:
  Preheat the oven to 180c deg or Gas mark 4. Line your cake tin with a cake liner or some parchment paper.
• Cream the butter until soft with your mixer, then add the sugar and mix well.  Whisk in the eggs one at a time and fold in the remaining ingredients.  You could put all the sponge ingredients in the mixer and whiz them until combined but I prefer to do it the old way.
• Put the mixture into your tin and smooth it over with a knife.  Bake in the oven for 40mins or until a skewer comes out clean.
• When baked, remove from oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes.  Next remove the cake from the tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.
• While the cake is cooling you can make the buttercream icing.  Put all the ingredients for the buttercream icing in your mixer and whiz until it’s light and fluffy.
• Put your cake on your nice fancy plate and spread the icing over the top of the cake with your palette knife, dust with a sprinkle of cocoa powder and add some chocolate chips or coffee beans to finish it off. Slice it up & enjoy … Yum!

Hope you enjoy making this, I leave you with a quote I found that is really adapt for the Irish Mammy at least ….